Friday, March 13, 2009

Krauthammer brings down the hammer on Obama

There are so many good lines in Charles Krauthammer's recent op-ed on Obama's stem cell decision and speech, it's hard to pick and choose which ones to quote. Krauthammer is a proponent of embryonic stem cell research and was invited to Obama's signing ceremony. He declined and I'm guessing he won't be receiving any more invites.

While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, President Obama replaced it with no line at all....

I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence....

Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

Dr. James Thomson, the pioneer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.